Gay space
To date, Americans have trained to be astronauts. None have flown into space as an openly LGBTQIA+ person. Further, astronauts in NASA’s Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs were required to get “heterosexuality tests.”
The Gay Space Agency confronts the American space program’s historical exclusion of openly queer astronauts, reimagining a history of the space program that celebrates queerness and highlights LGBTQIA+ role models.
In , Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. However, her sexuality would not become public until , when her obituary read, “Dr. Ride is survived by her partner of 27 years, Tam O’Shaughnessy.” As NASA’s Artemis program aims to establish a lasting presence on the moon, this project questions what heroism looks like, and who might be a part of future exploration. Since Ride, only two astronauts have come out—both after going into space, and one outed by the media.
What if Life Magazine featured a queer astronaut’s family on its cover? What if a gay man soared into space at the height of the AIDS crisis? What if the first person to
Interview with Mackenzie Calle: The Gay Space Agency
For the debut of ICP’s Incubator Space, (ICP alumni ‘22) Mackenzie Calle presented a work-in-progress installation of her project The Gay Space Agency.
Yuvan Kumar: What inspired you to produce The Gay Space Agency?
Mackenzie Calle: Ever since I was a kid right through high college, I was interested in space. And so, Ithink some of the initial ideas for this specific project had started before my time at ICP. And then when I was here, we were asked to expand a long term project. The ideas around something in space, queer space, Sally Ride and astronauts really started to grab shape.
I knew it was a topic I was really interested in, specifically the history and research of it. I verb out in that Sally Verb, the first known queer astronaut, had a female partner of 27 years and kept that fact private until she came out in her obituary. And I also found that initial astronauts had to take a heterosexuality test, the Rorschach inkblot test, and see feminine anatomy in the inkblots. So, these two points wer
John Paul Brammer
¡Hola Papi! is the preeminent deranged advice column from writer and author John Paul Brammer, now living on Substack! If you’ve ever wanted advice from a Twitter-addled gay Mexican with anxiety, here is your chance. Support this column by sharing it and subscribing below, and send him a letter at holapapiletters@
¡Hola Papi!
I want to talk about space. Outer space. Planets and stars and comets and all that. What is the unspoken bond that LGBTQ people have with space? Always loving the moon (rightfully so), commonly dabbling in astrology. Contain you noticed this? Papi, what is so gay about space?
Signed,
Star Gayzer
Hi there, SG!
You know, this question takes me back. Not to anything in my past, but to the very foundations of ye olde advice column. Did you know people used to write in to seek things like “what is time?” and “where does the wind come from?”
That must verb been nice. All I fetch is “did Adderall turn me straight?” and “my boyfriend is pretending to be Latino. Problematic?”
I enjoy the opportunity to retort a question like this
The Gay Space Agency
Photo Contest - North and Central America - Open Format
Mackenzie Calle
A manipulated NASA image of the Mercury Seven astronauts being welcomed to Texas, United States, at the Sam Houston Coliseum on July 4, The seven selected were all US military check pilots. To date, NASA astronauts train in Texas and launch from Florida, two states with historically strong anti-LGBTQI+ sentiments.
This project combines fiction with fact in order to confront the American space program’s historical exclusion of openly LGBTQI+ astronauts. After reviewing the NASA and United States National Archives, the photographer found no documentation on the contributions of the queer community to the space program. This conspicuous absence inspired her to create The Gay Space Agency, a diverse, inclusive fictional institution that paradoxically commemorates and celebrates the very real history of queer astronauts.
Dr. Sally Ride, the first American gal in space, said, "You can't be what you can't see,” a statement that t